Shame, shame, shame. And for what? To kill some guy who would be replaced by a clone of that guy in a few days, to be killed by another drone and replaced by a clone of that guy in a few days, to be killed by another drone and replaced by a clone of that guy in a few days, to be killed by another drone and replaced...

It's a phucking malevolent farce.

Disgusting. And inexcusable on every level in, supposedly, the greatest nation on earth.

But as long as the shipping lanes are open, and our dear friends in the Saudi Royal family aren't feeling too threatened by the unrest in Yemen, all is still right in the world. Perpetual war ain't so bad as long as others far far away are the only ones who perpetually feel it.

Well I am not sure what you mean by traditional, but Yemen still allows child marriages, and is supposedly making plans to ban them. And if men can marry up to four wives (polygamy) also does not fall under the canopy of traditional marriage in the US..

Start a global "War on Drones". Compare everyone we could think of to Hitler. Call a bunch of people we probably made up "cowards".

Any involvement with drones would be grounds for immediate imprisonment without trial. Radio controlled airplane hobbyists would be decried as fifth columnists. Many would be imprisoned.

Democrats and Republicans would agree wholeheartedly on these policies. And higher-ups in both parties would trip over each other to be first to say the most blood-thirsty things to waiting camera crews.

Meanwhile the media would gin up a phony debate between the parties about the use of salad forks.

as this drone strike is, it, unfortunately, is one that continues. This strike apparently was misdirected unless the bride was suspected as being a bad guy. However, what would have been our expectation if the "right" convoy was targeted? Or, looking it in a fundamental way, what are we doing there? What are our aims for this poverty and water-crisis stricken country?

Are we at war with Yemenis? It does not seem so, since we are spending vast amounts of taxpayer money to finance a fragile government in exchange for their cooperation. The surge of drones may be intended to get al Qaeda, but drone attacks are likely to inflame their prominence--violence through drones will surely guarantee a strengthening of al Qaeda.

And, of course, it is hard to keep our al Qaeda's straight, since those affiliated groups in Syria, for instance, may become a part of our attempts at a political solution in that civil war, I can see why it is more convenient and more blurred, to just call them the "bad guys." (until they are not).

If drones are to be the face of America, there ought to be some clearly articulated goals that might justify the warts, beyond involvement in another incoherent and inconclusive misadventure in a distant land.

...now works for the NSA, spies on people, travels the world, blah blah blah, and while I love this kid, while we have a very difficult history together, I have to be honest and say he is a guy who has no, and I mean ZERO, even marginally savvy understanding of what makes people tick. It's only recently in fact that I have come to believe my beautiful little brother is, in fact, an almost heartbreaking example of very highly functioning Asperger's. And he works for the NSA, and he is a terribly sensitive kid. Oy, I just wish he would quit, or get fired, anything to get him out of the military, intelligence world. Atheist prayers have been said. But, as I know...such is the difficult grip of mortal and rational existence.

when we firebomb eighty-effing-thousand men, women, and children in Tokyo all we hear about it is Audie Murphy movies and The Greatest Generation and John Phillip Sousa marches..

Point being that an utterly savage, total-war precedent has already been firmly established in the military strategist mentality that makes fifteen "collateral" casualties acceptable if not negligible..

we are currently being made to feel that chemical weapons are barbaric, but good old warm and fuzzy nukes - set to incinerate millions at a go - paper houses - brick and mortar - steel - straw - the lot - That's cool. That's Christian.

any nukes--they were conventional bombs. Tokyo had been so bombed prior to Hiroshima that many say the nukes were not required.

No, Obama is not evil. And, the fire bombing of Tokyo is much, much different than the drone strikes.

As long as you are saying Obama is evil it will be hard to have a serious discussion with you. Obama is as evil as, and much less so imo, than LBJ, JFK, Truman, FDR, Wilson, Jackson and let's toss in Jefferson for kicks. Maybe Carter was more pure but he has his detractors as well. Now that we have established that every President has been evil, we can just congratulate ourselves on our great insight.

no way to evaluate Obama except by looking at his actions. Knowingly continuing to use drones as he does, leaves him open to harsh evaluation. I am not, however, making that evaluation in this post - nor did I in the previous one.

What I said was that chemical weapons have been recently condemned as evil, inhuman and against international law. They are.

However, nuclear weapons are not the subject of discussion of late. They are, for some reason, considered to be compatible with international law, apparently.

To me, the reason for this is that the people who possess nuclear weapons control the dialogue.

In my slender opinion, the issue should be the need to ban all of these weapons. Not just selectively choosing to outlaw those possessed by people who do not belong to the nuclear club.

note that BHO has been very interested to control loose nukes and dismantle them from the time he was a Senator. Please note the work he did with Richard Lugar when he was a Senator and with Russian President Medvedev after he became President. link
Even during campaigning, he firmly took the use of nukes "off the table" and got mocked by HRC for it. (and even BTD thought he made a "gaffe")link

Lentinel, you are once again throwing the kitchen sink at the President without bothering to inform ourself about the facts!

even people in Afghanistan are criticizing Karzai for having double standards related to civilian killings by the Pakistani Taliban, it is amusing to see how far some people will go to mouth propaganda of the Pakistani intelligence service for ideological reasons.

If you really cared about the number of civilians killed in Pakistan, you would also count the number of people getting killed in that country by the Taliban and religious fundametalists. Those numbers are many times higher than civilians getting killed by drones. Being silent in that regard makes you an unwitting tool of religious fanatics.

Liberals should care about loss of civilian life anywhere in the world. Aren't liberals supposed to be the unselfish people?

The left looks up to France for a lot of things. It is time for people in the left side of politics in America to also take a look at how much France is expanding peacekeeping missions through its military in central African countries to prevent loss of lives after a Socialist became a President.

But if you think that it is onl about empires, I will still say that the world is still a better place when you have an American empire instead of a Russian or Chinese one. If America withdraws from the world, the Russians and the Chinese will build their empires. Just look at the territorial disputes the Chinese are having with all their Asian neighbors or how aggressively Russia is trying to prevent countries like Ukraine from casting their lot with the rest of Europe.

I have addressed the issue of drones.
No lentinel, it is you who is avoiding issues that you do not want to talk about.

If you do not want to talk about civilian deaths in Pakistan caused by the Taliban and other religious fanatics, it is clear to me that you really do not care about civilian deaths. When you do not care about civilian deaths, your continuous beating of drums about drones does not seem to be anything other than political and ideological posturing.

The president's specific words: I'm "really good at killing people," authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann write in "Double Down: Game Change 2012," The Daily Mail reported. They get their claim from a Washington Post report that buries the statement as a brief anecdote in an article, in which the president is described as speaking to aides about the drone program and then making the claim.

When asked about this, the denial was swift:

"I haven't talked to him about the book," said adviser Dan Pfeiffer on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday. "I haven't read it. He hasn't read it. But he hates leaks."

but it is viewed as necessary.....and you can disagree with that assessment.

But we have been at war with Al Qaeda, and stopping the drone strikes altogether sounds nice, but do we really want to give up all our military options? Perhaps being more careful should be considered.

But it is obvious to me that they are incapable of being "more careful".

There are two reasons for this, imo.

The first is that weapons like drones cannot pinpoint a target - in the way one person with a rifle can.

The second is even more troubling: We use these weapons in the full knowledge that civilians will be killed, but do so anyway because those casualties are "acceptable" if the target is of "high value".

So we blow them away, and then sometimes apologize if it doesn't seem too demeaning.

when "Big Dog", "Cheetah", "Wild Cat" and insect robots will be able to chase down Al Qaeda in streets and alleys and drones may only provide some air cover without needing to actually fire and kill from the air.

Because nothing spells credibility than an unnamed Yemeni official. I'll wait until I have more information before pretending I know exactly what happened.

I know there are quite a few far leftwingers on this site, but you're not more sophisticated because you always believe the worst about the United States. Try having a healthy dose of skepticism for everyone and not just your own country.

What would our motivations be for purposely attacking a wedding party?

None.

So either we are incredibility stupid, we were tricked, or there actually were terrorists in the convoy.

Was there a post on the suicide bombing in Yemen that killed four times as many people less than 24 hours ago? Make no mistake, Yemen is in a battle with Al Qaeda.

The point is not whether the people in the wedding party were killed purposefully or accidentally.

These drones kill people. They kill people.
The civilians are dead. Purposefully or not. They are dead. And we are responsible. We coined, during the Clinton regime, the phrase "collateral damage" to mask the reality that we routinely assume that we will slaughter civilians if we feel that the "target" is of sufficient "value".

So we talk about it.
You are free to talk about suicide bombings in Yemen by Al Qaeda if that is your desire.

But those of us hurt by the knowledge of what our government is doing in our name have a right to express that hurt without being lectured by you.

and no doubt.. Of course I would ask you should we have waited for the Germans to get rid of Hitler and quit gassing Jews but I don't want to embarrass you.

kdog had a good point. The only thing that's changed is the technology and the length of the invent.. The barbarians sacked, raped and pillaged Rome for a week or so. Thousands starved during the 100 years war..

borders Vietnam in the North? How do you think the U.S would respond if China was bombing Toronto
"into the ground"? and what makes the sour grapes revisionists think the North Vietnamese and Chinese were so limited in terms of resourcefulness and their will to continue the fight?

"We few, we happy few, we band of hall guards;
For he to-day that patrols the dangerous halls with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And students in all this school now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That guarded the dangerous halls of school this day."

There is a difference between planning to kill civilians and using the type of bombs designed to kill as many civilians as possible--while in their homes--and drone strikes that seek to avoid killing civilians.

be a little more specific about how "Obama's ROE is causing soldiers to be killed", because the military modus operandi doesn't seem to be noticably different from when Bush was President and you never once blamed Bush..

Your thinking about any Democrat administration military policy is utterly clouded by this the-Left-tied-our-hands grudge leftover from the Vietnam era. Still shadow boxing with the past in the present.

I find it infinitely interesting that the media so often fail to ask so many of the really important questions. For example, according to icasualties, as of the 13th of October, 2012, 1,567 of the 2,136 US troops killed in Afghanistan have died since Obama became president of the United States. That is, 73% of all troops fatalities there happened in the 45 months since Obama took office. The number of wounded has also gone up an incredible amount: almost 5 times the number of people have been wounded under Obama as under Bush.

These are amazing figures, and need to be explained. Why have so many died under Obama, when proportionately so many fewer died under George Bush's watch, even though he began this war, and waged it longer?

The answer is easy to provide. Under Obama, the Rules of Engagement (ROE) have been progressively tightened, limiting more and more the circumstances under which a US serviceman can use deadly force. Worst of all, the ROE has become so complicated that soldiers are scared to fire for fear they will face a court martial. The aim of the changing ROE is theoretically benign: every attempt is being made to guard against civilian casualties. But US soldiers are facing people who are indistinguishable from civilians in almost every way, until they start shooting or set off a bomb. How do they know if someone involved in suspicious activities is a civilian or an insurgent?

snip

Instead of being afraid of the might of U.S. firepower, enemy fighters use our rules of engagement and restrictions on air support against us. When faced with a split-second decision of whether to shoot, soldiers many times must hesitate--or be investigated. Or, as in the case of the 2009 Battle of Ganjgal, excessive restrictions on air and artillery assets unfortunately meant excessive American deaths.

... won't "have me around" because they don't like someone exposing their delusional fairy tales with hard facts and evidence. They prefer to hear themselves spout nonsense and make juvenile insults on their own little playgrounds where they can make the rules and delete the comments that expose them for the frauds they are.

called "Harlem Nights", with Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall and Redd Foxx, there is a scene in a car in which the car goes over a bump and a gun which Arsenio, in the back seat, is holding fires and goes right through the head of the guy in the front passenger seat.

The guy is as dead as a doornail, and Arsenio is talking to him saying, "I'm sorry man".

Arse is genuinely sad about it.

Of course, it didn't mean that much to the guy in the front seat with the hole in his noggin.

That's what I think about every time one of these hellish drones go off and kill a bunch of civilians - and the US, usually reluctantly, issues a heartfelt apology.